The Broker Transparency Debate: My Full Thought Process (Mini Vent, sorry) 

They have a separate agreement with the shipper. There is no responsibility to be had when the shipper has only given them limited options if any at all.

Lets shorten the process. Trucking companies need to learn how to go direct to shippers. PERIOD.

@@NormVW2013 Never happening if you own only one truck with one trailer. Been there - TRIED that. Two shippers offered me way less money that the broker was paying me to haul those same shippers' loads.

Freight brokers are essentially a carriers sales department, and sales always gets paid more with less overhead costs, and every business is supposed to have a sales department. If you’re not selling your services direct to the shipper as much as these freight brokers do day in and day out. Then they have the right to name their price.

Capitalism's end goal isn't a free market, it's a market in which it's controlled for the maximum profit of a corporation. In this scenario, who is the beneficiary of that control? Brokers only have ~20% of the freight in the market, leaving 80% being handled by other means. Massive trucking companies control much of the contract and LTL market. Smaller outfits and owner/ops have very limited power in comparison. So you could cap brokers at some arbitrary percentage profit, but you're only impacting a small portion of the industry. If the percentage of profit is too small for most brokers to survive then all that will happen is the freight will consolidate into a smaller percentage of brokers/big carriers, driving rates down further. If the percentage is high enough for brokers to survive then you've likely just maintained status quo in the limited market that you're dealing with. It's not your small brokers or trucking companies that have "banded together" to control the pricing, you need to look higher up than that.

​@@dangranot5703 You got it. Many brokers and the trucking companies who use them will never see the big contracts and big revenue that the largest companies get. I'm a LTL team driver. First trip of the week, Atlanta to Salt Lake. 1900 miles Lead trailer 15k pounds $8300 revenue Rear 10k pounds $4300 revenue Our dock supervisors have a $5 per mile revenue goal per freight lane.

This is the only correct response.

Collusion is a crime and it's happening right under our noses.

Pretty dangerous road to go down asking for the government to cap how much one business can make because I’m sure you wouldn’t want that to happen to you.

@@bradj7900 you’ve got a great point.. Realtors have a cap on their commission. Sure a lot of other businesses have caps too. Never seen this industry in this shape before. In the past when fuel went up so did the rates.. putting a cap on brokers of 15% would be a good experiment for a couple years. See what happens

@@bradj7900agreed. I’m scared to reach to the government for anything. They’ll probably fuck it up, and charge us for it. That being said, we’re already getting screwed by the government and the least they can do is regulate the side of trucking that isn’t regulated that works against the actual workers.

@@B0RN2RACE100 It would be easier to do away with factoring and quick pay than to try and regulate brokers. It would raise the bar for entry if everyone had to have 45 days of money to run on while they wait for their money to start coming in. You wouldn’t have near as many people buying trucks and getting authority when times are good if the investment was a lot more than it currently needs to be.

Brokers are already required to show carriers what a load pays, but only if the carrier requests such info. If you ask the government to cap the profit of one entity in an industry, you are opening the door to cap the profit of the rest of the industry. As a carrier, I don't want the government dictating how much I can profit on any load.

If only more shoppers and buyers had this same thought process, trucking would be great again 🤠

Hang in there bro

In the same boat, My Pete is breaking my balls, then my brake hub on my trailer brakes and my brakes fell out, let me say that again my brakes fell out, lucky a passer bye flagged me down and it saved a rim and tire

@@snappingfingers8786 Sorry to hear. What you described, looks to ma as poor preventive maintenance...it is worth (wisely) spending the money on it, trust me. It will save you money on the long run in so many ways and keep you in business. Imagine the trouble you would have been in if two wheels fell off and killed someone? You definitely don't want that in your life. If you can't afford keeping your equipment in some at least close to top condition (the vital stuff), then this business is not right for you. You can't successfully run a warehouse business with a leaking roof that you can't afford to fix, right?

@@truckingwithnose Thanks. Not sure if it's worth it though. Sooner or later we'll have to accept same fate as dinosaurs. Times change, technology, everything changes, AI...most of us 'little guys' will be gone regardless of the industry. Been optimist whole my life, yet, in a strange way I'm glad I won't live much longer to watch a handful of rich people owning the world. Free market (without some serious regulations that don't exist at this time) doesn't work...works only for the ultra rich while the rest of us are joining the hunger games in ever growing numbers. Good luck to the new generations.

@@verko5292 I just had a PM and today out of nowhere the wheel seal started leaking, trust me I have done everything and just went backward

seek professionals support not some very cool and semi-knowledgeable guy on RU-vid. Personally, I gather information on RU-vid but verify with Stacey Macken . If it doesn't align with her report, I avoid getting involved. This way i've been able to save a lot of money while making a lot of money

Getting advice from financial advisors, like Stacey Macken , can be a smart move to reshape your portfolio. She has the expertise to help you make informed decisions.

Her technical analysis is excellent and hid interpretation/projections of the market is so accurate I sometimes ask myself if she is human haha. Point is, Stacey is the perfect trader to follow for advise and daily signals.

I am surprised that this name is being mentioned here, I stumbled upon some of her clients testimonies on CNBC news last week..

Sincerely speaking. I will continue to trade and stick to Stacey Macken daily signals and guides as long as it works well for me.

You hauled a $2k load. The broker sold the load to the shipper for $4500.

@@marqueswilsonn does 2k pay the bills with a profit????

@@snappingfingers8786 you have a slave mindset.

I’d be curious what percentage of people crying about transparency had a truck and authority prior to 2021/2022? I wonder how many went out and overpaid for equipment in 2021 or 2022 to jump into the owner operator game? I wonder how many were even trucking back in 2008 when everything crashed? The people who’ve been through all this a time or two before aren’t whining and wanting the government to help them negotiate better.

Simple. Ain’t it?

Landstar has pricing power! They are a billion dollar company, you cannot compare a small carrier pricing power to theirs.

Our beloved leader told us that the system was is rig but do we liste😮n no we want to throw him in jail just for telling us the truth .

They don't care. We are not in this industry to gamble. We are in it to make a profit and not have to work in an office or warehouse with people breathing over our shoulders.

@@coreysmith2196Brokers are in the market to make a profit, too. You want to negotiate with them for rate but make them show everything while you do not.

If running a brokerage was so easy, why isn't every MC# double authorized as a carrier and brokerage? It's because there is a level of difficult work that has to be done in order to achieve success in a brokerage, that most truck side individuals do not understand, and do not have a readily available way of acquiring that knowledge. So not only are brokerages run and their competitive edge against carriers and other brokerages, they are also competitively advantaged in their overall knowledge of freight on both sides (truck and customer sides) and they leverage that to gain a profit.

@@dustinsimpson3684 never said it was easy at all. I’m saying if the carrier are so concerned with competing against Brokers they’ll have to have their own brokerage and see the perceived advantages for themselves

The gross won't change, IMHO, but would force a more market driven sharing of each load revenue.

@blairm9000 how did you come to the opinion that gross wouldn't change in a cutthroat business like trucking?

@truckercarlson9081 - the shipper shrugs off the broker share, so the seller won't care if the broker shares .ore with trucking. The buyer will also pay the same either way. So the buyer and seller are agnostic on the broker vs trucker split. To buyer and seller it's all lumped into the same transportation cost.

@blairm9000 the current broker will get outbid when the contracts up and lower the price of the load. The shipper doesn't care who hauls the freight (most of the time) and will sign with the cheapest broker. No need to jump through all those hoops to get to the bottom line. Also, your assumption that the shipper shrugs off the brokers share is way off base because they don't want to pay a huge surcharge to the broker when they know the load can be moved for so much less.

They did all the hard work up front by selling their services on behalf of carriers who don’t have sales in their operations.

If it were as easy as you say, every MC would have customers for their freight needs, and the brokers would disappear. But it isn't that easy, and your not taking in to consideration the work done on the broker side, which is also apparent in the first 2 sentences above. You can't mandate a percentage when operating costs are not fixed across brokerages. Just like you can't cap a truck's earnings to $1.80/mile when some outfits would not break even at that mileage. For context see below to better understand the brokerage's responsibilities in a load. Brokers work the financial transaction, as well as sell themselves to customers, and all the work involved in the operational side of working a load. So let's give the broker 5% for each of the parts of a load they work-> 1)Signing up a customer to receive loads from and coordinate schedules for freight, 2) Provide market analysis and quotes to the customer to ensure market competitiveness, 3) verify and maintain a network of carrier's meeting set standards to ensure safe transit of freight, book a truck with agreed rate and coordinate details from Pick to drop, 4) finance the load payment from the customer to the truck with variances between payment timelines, and finally 5)they maintain a customer and their success against constant competition soliciting your customer. All of those tasks could be delegated out to different companies who could all take a 5% cut- totaling 25% taken for "service fees". The fact that all these separate but equally crucial parts are done by one company does not mean that the services provided are not done to a high degree and deserving of their cut.

@@dustinsimpson3684 thank you for taking the time to explain all of that. I truly appreciate it. That said, I am still not sure why their role is so vital. It is an added layer of bureaucracy that ultimately raises costs to the shippers, which trickles down to higher prices for the consumer.

@@dandavenport4565 let's use that same logic on the carrier side.. I'm not sure why a carrier needs to hire an outside dispatch service when they could just hire someone within. I don't understand why carriers use factoring companies when they could just hire somebody from within. I just have both of those. Things are more efficient in some situations when outsourced as opposed to in-house

So brokers and shipper will then push for a law of transparency of real carrier cost? Hence forcing the real race to the bottom.

@@MrNoSolo Isn't that the exact argument you're using against brokers right now? So now it becomes nobody should know carriers real costs because then they wouldn't be able to make additional profit on some loads? Weird how that works.

Let's consider the idea of capping a truck's margin for each load for just a moment. All trucks can only make a certain profit margin, regardless of the quality of their equipment, experience, timely updates, paperwork management, operating costs, on-time percentage, or reputation. See how that makes no sense? The better you are at your job, the higher a demand you have for your services. Brokerages are no different, you just don't see the things they bring to the table, but customers do. Customers are fine with what they pay to brokerages, or else they would use another brokerage or go carrier-direct. The truck's booking freight at the current rates are also fine with their current setup, or else they wouldn't book the load. If your operating costs are too high then that's too bad, we want everyone to receive capped line hauls because that would make the truck competition fair for all carriers. See how terrible and ignorant that sounds...

@@dustinsimpson3684 you are not responding to my post. You are a broker trying to justify the shit you are doing to hard working people. Am finished with you and your attempt at propaganda.

Most of the freight out there is direct loads to the carrier. The spot market is the leftover from that. So brokers are not needed in the industry. The work is actually done when the freight moves A to B not when it’s posted on the load board.

While I work with shippers directly, it's always by accident. There are several reasons I stick to the spot market- first it gives me a chance to keep the finger on the pulse of what is happening in the market. Second, I have been pretty lucky with the loads, although that requires triple the work, but what can you do. And finally, it's time. In order to properly start looking for shippers, I need to give something up to free up time. The only thing I can give up right now that will not affect my company or family is this channel, but I am not going to do that. And I am BAAAAAAD at delegating...unfortunately.

​@@TruckingMadeSuccessfulthe market is horrendous. We've found less than 3-5 trucks and you will have a hard time keeping up with a shipper and the rates we've come across haven't been worth it.

Trucking is one of four industry sectors to be grandfathered in from before the fair labor standards act( the other 3 being ranching/ agriculture, the railroads, and mining). If you don't know what FLSA is go look that up and learn something today.

@bensanders7392 I didn't learn anything I had already known. I'm well vested in the Ag side of things as well as refrigerated the industry is definitely ruined on the door swinging side

Nobody is asking their real estate broker to cover the transaction cost of a home for 60 days between payment and receipt of funds. Meaning the truck wants 30 day pay and customer wants 90 day. Brokers work the financial transaction, as well as sell themselves to customers, and all the work involved in the operational side of working a load. So let's give the broker 5% for each of the parts of a load they work-> 1)Signing up a customer to receive loads from and coordinate schedules for freight, 2) Provide market analysis and quotes to the customer to ensure market competitiveness, 3) verify and maintain a network of carrier's meeting set standards to ensure safe transit of freight, book a truck with agreed rate and coordinate details from Pick to drop, 4) finance the load payment from the customer to the truck with variances between payment timelines, and finally 5)they maintain a customer and their success against constant competition soliciting your customer. All of those tasks could be delegated out to different companies who could all take a 5% cut- totaling 25% taken for "service fees". The fact that all these separate but equally crucial parts are done by one company does not mean that the services provided are not done to a high degree and deserving of their cut. Also, nobody tells a driver they can only work a set amount of hours in a day, they are only told how many they can operate the truck in transit. That driver can call companies on their non-driving time, they could build relationships with customers near their desired living area, they can email and cold call a few hundred businesses per day to get in a position to bid on contracts and future freight, they could book their own load for the next day, they could build and submit invoices for themselves, they could do preventative maintenance on their equipment, they could process their taxes for their business, they could file business documents to state, local, and federal governments, they could washout and clean their trailer and truck. All of these things above are not confined to Hours of Service, and yet many if not most of the above items are outsourced by a carrier to a different group. Maybe it's a dispatch service, a tax professional, an equipment service center, a business manager, an MC# filing company, a Truck wash and service center, Carriers may not like brokerages and the margin they make on a load, but they rarely seem interested in discussing the margin that is squeezed from them for the items listed above. If there was a SUPER LOVES that did everything listed above for a driver with one single line item for charges labeled "Service Fee" the carrier would be irate at how much was being charged to them since it all goes to one group, they would scream about how much they are being screwed over for someone who doesn't even touch or see the freight, but because standard procedure is to use multiple companies for the tasks above, a carrier may not like how much goes out the door, but they pay that price regardless because it is necessary to sustain their business model around the work they choose to put in. But when it's a broker we think they should get a flat fee and suck it up. If it were that simple, get your own brokerage authority.

Broker represents the shipper/receiver. Dispatcher represents the carrier

Dispatcher finds loads from brokers then books your truck and takes another cut off the top. They are extremely illegal in the eyes of DOT and have no insurance. Brokers usually talk to shippers and split up a massive number of loads so they don’t have to think about it. Sometimes the customer handles all that and it’s a straight transaction from broker to truck. You can’t have perfect transparency because most of these loads are put together in pieces. It would be better to make it extremely difficult for someone to become a broker so there’s no more scammers and cancellations at last minute.

@@TruckingMadeSuccessful Oh ok I’m trucker but not been one that long my company uses brokers lot. RXO

@@markm0000 Oh ok thank you crazy yes I want be owner operator but every one I talk to says not good time.

@@giorgiotribastone7070 it’s never a good time lol. You’re working hard to just pay everyone else and left with less than a regular driver if you’re lucky. Trucking as a driver is an easy way to save up some money and have alone time to think about what you want to do with your life. Don’t haul around regular freight like reefer or dry van, do tanker or more specialized like a piggyback forklift delivery. There’s a lot of really good blue collar jobs that need a CDL because the service truck is big or you have to drive around heavy equipment. Don’t be on the open road more than you need to be if you value your life and time.

1000% right

A percentage of what? The total paid by the customer? What impact does a truck have on a customers agreed upon rate with a carrier. If you are the truck, and I am the broker, I would happily go 30/70 or even more to the truck if the truck made any difference on the customer rate, but they don't. A truck gets it from A->B, but the brokerage is the services added party that drives rates up. If a carrier could provide the services added part of the job better than a brokerage they would and the load would be carrier direct.

@@dustinsimpson3684 A percentage of what customer is paying. At least you know you are not getting ripped off by the brokers, but then again numbers can be forged. And how a truck doesn’t have a diff on rates? If you stop hauling cheap freight eventually brokers will have to ask customers to pay more. In the end it all comes down to how you look at it, you can say I don’t care what broker makes as long as I making profit, that’s true too but having an option of not getting ripped off by broker is not a bad thing too.

Carriers can have the same information if they went direct to the shipper.

@@ChampHTX yessir I agree, unfortunately some direct shippers don’t really wanna work with 1 truck operations directly because they either don’t have the constant freight, or they have a lot of freight and want to use larger carriers.

Why does it matter what a broker is making when they quote to customers, just be better at quoting to customers and beat them right? Do you ask brokerages what they book loads for that they don't send to you? The answer is no, because that does not change your operating costs or what you would like to make on the lane. How is it any different for the broker side who quotes based on the same principles you quote at? Costs plus desired margin equals total cost. If it were this easy you'd have your own customers and stop relying on broker freight.

@@dustinsimpson3684 there aren’t enough loads out there for every carrier to have direct shippers, and the lucky ones that do sometimes have to use the load boards for return loads. Every owner operator out there uses brokered loads at some point. All I’m saying is now if a broker is getting paid $2000 on a load and posts it for a $1000 nobody knows what his margin is and some brokers will flat out lie through their teeth about what they have in it and convince some new sucker to take it for that. If they’re getting paid $2000 for the load and they have to disclose that do you think anybody in their right mind is gonna take that load for $1000? Absolutely not.

I am not interested in becoming a broker at the moment

Is your mortgage broker also doing the Pre-sale inspection? Are they doing a termite Inspection? Are they searching the MLS for listings that meet your desired layout? Are they negotiating on your behalf to provide an offer to the seller? Are they reaching out to their contacts to get info potential other bids for a house you like? Are they doing walk throughs with you of properties to show you what they look like? Are they coaching you through the home buying process? Notice how all these things are done by different parties and they all charge a service fee of some kind. If you want to assign a cap to Brokers that's fine, but you need to understand the multitude of things that brokers do. And if we gave them 5% for each Major service performed, they could be anywhere from 25% -35% margin. 1) Signing up a customer to receive loads from and coordinate schedules for freight using sales tactics and building a personal relationship with the customer 2) Provide market analysis and quotes to the customer to ensure market competitiveness and up to date pricing on a per load basis or time period basis (weekly, monthly, quarterly) 3) Verify and maintain a network of carrier's meeting set safety and professional standards to ensure safe transit of freight, book a truck with agreed rate and coordinate details from ick to drop 4) Finance the load payment from the customer to the truck with variances between payment timelines 5) Maintain a customer and their success against constant competition soliciting your customer. All of those tasks could be delegated out to different companies who could all take a 5% cut- totaling 25% taken for "service fees". The fact that all these separate but equally crucial parts are done by one company does not mean that the services provided are not done to a high degree and deserving of their cut.

@@dustinsimpson3684 I was a mortgage broker over 20 years. The effort of the broker doesent mean anything anymore. Now its down to a transactional fee not worth it anymore but lenders still make the interest but invest the money in the house. Load brokers are a non asset based service. All found money with no needed buildings or loans to give the load to the trucking company compared to a mortgage loan.

They did. It's called Uber freight.

@@fredahlberg7193 isn’t Uber freight the broker? Never used Uber freight

@trevorvancamp3354 yrs, but it started out as an app supposed to pair truckers and shippers just like ride share pairing riders and people with cars. But Uber rideshare company takes too much from the driver of car just like they do with the truckdriver and shipper. I don't use them either because of that